Been climbing for about seven years, so not necessarily a beginner, but wanting to foray into some more Desert Towers. Who has some advice on a good progression of well protected desert crack climbs to build skills and confidence for a climber hoping to eventually take on climbs like Fine Jade or Primrose Dihedrals?

Cheers!

Jeremy

Hi Jeremy,

The best answer is mileage.

It's kind of a tough question, because there aren't very many "easy" desert cracks out there. Wall Street/Potash Road in Moab has a good selection of easier sandstone crack climbs.

I guess I'd recommend heading down to Indian Creek and top-roping a lot. I'd take a look at what towers you want to climb--Fine Jade, for instance--and examine what type of crack skills you'll need for it. Fine Jade has an 11- fingers crux and a 10+ thrutchy wide hands crux, so you know you'll need to climb at that grade for those pitches. You might try Think Pink in IC for the wide hands training. Don't feel bad about aiding at IC to hand a TR on climbs that are a bit out of the way.

Sorry that this doesn't line out a slick little progression, but because almost everything is vertical there's not much under 5.10 crack climbing in the desert.
Cheers,
Nate

Jer-
For a great warm up for desert towers try Otto's Route in Colorado National Monument. Then put North Chimney or Kor-Ingalls on Castelton on your list next. Lighthouse Tower on River Road should fall in there somewhere followed by Ancient Art in the Fishers (not that bad), anyway you cut it here are 4 cool desert summits under 5.10. Enjoy!

Thanks for the tips fellas... Those are some good climbs to put on the to-do list. We got a week-long trip to SE Utah coming up in the spring. Think I'll try to get out to IC for an extended weekend prior to that trip and get some mileage in. Good reminder on aiding up something that's over my limit to get a bunch of laps. Also pretty easy to bum a toprope down at the creek. I just built a crack machine in my basement so I can practice there too!

Cheers,

Jer

Jeremy,
If you can dial that crack machine into offwidth, play around on that. Remember that practically every classic desert tower has an offwidth section. It's very humbling to get spanked on some offwidth a couple pitches off the ground - and it may not even be the crux. Along those lines, you should practice squeeze chimneys and chimneys. Lastly, an important skill to learn for desert towers is traveling lightly on bad rock, as many towers also have these sections. S. Sixshooter is a good example of that.

Thanks Dave, I could probably dial it out to about 5.5" which would be a good off-width. Get a little hand-stacking practice. I know a good place to practice off-widths up in your neck of the woods - Vedauwoo! I ought to be able to make it up there a few times this spring...

if you are looking to prepare for climbing towers, the typical creek routes won't get you completely up to speed. tower pitches tend to be more varied, less sustained, and usually have more of a 'dense' crux than an endurance crux. of course there are exceptions to this, however for the most part, you will want to concentrate on creek routes that throw a lot of different stuff at you. the previous poster's creek list looks pretty good, as it will require a lot of different techniques.

an example of a good tower preparation day at the creek would be:

tenderloins wall (all of these routes are clustered on R side:
Incredible Spam Crack (9) - good warmup hand crack in corner
Steer It Up (10) - good long, varied, with a lot of big hands and more complicated geometry, tight hands crux.
Heinz 58 (10) - good lower angle finger crack with feet and pods
Chopped Liver (10+) - good variety with off fingers ringlocking/laybacking at top
Mad Cow Disease (11-) - again, good variety with some OW, good hands, flared chimney, thin hands, and fingers.

if you can do pretty well on these in a day, you shouldn't have any problems on the tower routes you listed.

also, another local area for you that would have good carryover to tower climbing is eldo, in particular flake and crack systems. these tend to have trickier cruxes and feel more like tower pitches than most of the creek pitches do. also, eldo can give you experience climbing on questionable rock, which is pretty much a staple of tower climbing.

good luck!